Vettel wants Red Bull to mirror Ferrari’s step forward

Sebastian Vettel wants Red Bull to find the kind of step forward with their engine performance that Ferrari achieved in China.

Speaking ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix in today’s press conference, Vettel said the biggest area for improvement with the RB10 remains the performance of its Renault engine.

“It’s not a big secret I think if you look at the sector times or comparisons that we have available we currently lose out too much on the straights,” he said.

“But I think there’s always hope. Obviously again you have to look at it from the start. Where we started in winter testing was unfortunately way off compared to where we wanted to by all means.

“Talking about the car, we set fire to the car nearly every run. Talking about the engine, obviously we were not on the same page that we expected to be both in terms of reliability and performance so since that I think we had a very strong comeback. But obviously you missed that time of development.

“But I think there’s always hope. Just look at Ferrari for example: the last race, the step that they did was mostly in straight line. I think they got a better fuel and picked up around 7kph in the straights.

“So we know that our disadvantage is more than 7kph to the Mercedes which are currently the benchmark down the straights. But, you know, things can change quickly so we need to make sure that we push one hundred percent on the car and also the engine side.

“In the end we are a team, Renault and Red Bull Racing, both parties I think know that we need to push very hard to make sure that we beat these guys and also currently the strongest team, Mercedes.”

I still don’t believe that RBR’s 1 second gap to Mercedes is only down to engine. RBR has similar downforce to Mercedes but not more. Because RBR tend to run bigger wing angles and Mercedes don’t do that. In my opinion, Mercedes has advantage in almost every area.

Lewis H has already commented that RB are faster in the corners than Merc, but vastly slower down the straits. RB have more downforce but a poor PU. Once Renault sort that PU, Merc will not be enjoying such an advantage! Merc know full well they have to be 1st & 2nd each race until RB get their act together, to ensure they win the championship.
If RB had Merc PU, Daniel R would be head if the table now.

In Ferrari’s Horsepower documentary, Ferrari and shell delays with the development of the new fuel is well documented as the newer mixes were achieving good performances but with the drawback of misfires in regular intervals of time. I read last weekend that the FIA marshals do not allow new fuel formulas after Melbourne. In short I’m baffled that teams keep coming with fuel updates?!

I’ve got a simple solution, if you’re faster in the twisties but too slow on the straights why dont you reduce some wing angle instead of whining “poor us, our engiine isn’t as good as everyone elses”.